Sean Michael Kerner

Linux has traditionally faced off against Unix and Windows as its primary competition. The Linux Foundation’s 2013 End User study, not surprisingly, sees its progeny dominating. According to the report, Microsoft’s Windows 8 introduction has had a positive effect on Linux. Some 39 percent of the survey respondents indicated that in response to Windows 8, […]

From the ‘East Texas Courtroom Shenanigans’ files: Linux vendor Red Hat announced this AM that is has defeated Uniloc USA, Inc. in a patent law suit. Uniloc didn’t actually sue Red Hat directly, they went after Rackspace (a Red Hat customer). Red Hat indemnifies its customers and has since it launched its Open Source Assurance […]

The new T5 SPARC processor is a step up from the T4 that Oracle announced in September of 2011. Marshall Choy, Oracle’s director of systems solutions and business planning, explained to ServerWatch that Oracle is now positioning the T4 as the entry level for SPARC systems. The T5, which will be available in a single-socket […]

The new Switch Light virtual switch is based on Open Source technology called Indigo, which provides an OpenFlow agent. The idea of having a virtual switch for SDN is not new; the Linux kernel itself includes an open source virtual switch called vSwitch. The Open vSwitch has been part of every Linux distribution since the […]

For the past year, CloudStack has been in the Apache Incubator, a preliminary process for new projects at the Foundation that aims to validate that a project can follow the ‘Apache Way’ of getting things done. CloudStack has now officially graduated from the Incubator and is now a Top-Level Project at Apache. “It’s really important […]

From the ‘Truth in Advertising’ files: Oracle updated its SPARC chips and servers yesterday. All of it powered by Solaris Unix 11.x During the live event, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison proclaimed the new SPARC servers to be the fastest computers in the world. It’s a claim we’ve heard before from him – in reference to […]

FUEL is a library of OpenStack cloud management tools, assembled by integrator Mirantis. Mirantis is a leading OpenStack services vendor and recently raised $10 million in funding. Mirantis is now publicly releasing the FUEL library as an open source effort in a bid to help enterprises successfully manage and deploy OpenStack clouds at scale. Adrian […]

Martin Roesch helped to invent the modern IPS as the creator of the open source SNORT IPS, and is the founder of SourceFIRE. Roesch is an engineer and doesn’t care much for marketing terms. In a video interview with Enterprise Networking Planet, Roesch details his views on the current state of network security and why […]

From the ‘Core Projects’ files: In the beginning of the open source OpenStack cloud effort there were two projects – NASA’s Nova (aka Nebula) and Rackspace’s Swift. Since then OpenStack has added Cinder, Keystone, Horizon and Quantum as core projects, each enhancing the overall platform with storage, identity, management and networking features. There are a […]

Apple is advancing the state of Apple ID protection by introducing a two-step verification process. “Turning on two-step verification reduces the possibility of someone accessing or making unauthorized changes to your account information at My Apple ID or making purchases using your account,” Apple stated in a support note. Apple’s two-step verification will require users […]

Canonical is partnering with an agency within the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MII) to build a reference architecture for Chinese operating systems. As part of the effort, Canonical is also joining with the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in Beijing, China, in a new CCN Open Source Innovation Joint Lab. The […]

“Next year will be a big growth year for our entire hardware business” Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison during his company’s third quarter earnings call reporting a decline in hardware revenues (ServerWatch). “You’re unsuccessful when the failures aren’t news anymore” SSL 3.0 co-author, Paul Kocher reflecting on the success of SSL (eSecurity Planet) “The whole Big […]